A light flickered again in the same area, and Miguel held his breath, waiting for an opportunity. If he could take out Vlad or anyone with Vlad from this vantage point, he’d do it and save the SEALs clambering over those boulders a few bullets.
The night scope on his sniper rifle cast a green glow on the rugged terrain, with every rock and every edge standing out in stark relief. If only he could see a person, other than the SEALs, he could help verify this location for them.
The brush behind him rustled and he tensed his muscles. He could probably handle one of those little gerbils or moles, but if that was a bat flapping his wings behind him he just might lose it.
Miguel tapped his fingernail against the trigger. Snipers generally had all the patience in the world, but those SEALs down there should’ve emerged from that cluster of boulders by now. Maybe they’d discovered something out of his sight. Miguel’s own team would’ve found a way to signal that news.
He licked the grit from his lips and shifted his rifle again, zeroing in on the area where the SEALs had disappeared earlier. If they’d gotten his message, they should’ve popped up twenty degrees to the right of the jagged outcropping that looked like a mouthful of bad teeth.
He mumbled under his breath, “C’mon, guys.”
A shift and a scrape behind his location had the hair on the back of his neck quivering. Before he had time to analyze this latest noise behind him, movement on the rocks below had him tightening his finger on the trigger. A light flashed behind the rocks and a pop echoed in the distance.
What the hell just happened? Miguel hissed into his mic, “What was that? Send me a signal.”
The only signal he received was another flash and bang. Had the SEALs come upon Vlad’s hideout? Were they taking him out now?
The crack of a twig behind him didn’t sound like a nighttime rodent or even a bat, but his mission right now was to protect those men down there. Breathing heavily, Miguel swept the rocky hillside, looking for anything that hadn’t been there before.
He hadn’t liked the look of those particular rocks from the get-go, but the team had to traverse them to get to Vlad’s cave—if that was Vlad’s cave.
A head rose above the highest boulder and Miguel’s gut lurched. A man, a keffiyeh wrapped about his head, waved his arms in the air, a weapon clutched in one hand.
Miguel swallowed hard as he recognized the weapon. Then he swore when he realized the man was gesturing—toward him...or someone behind him.
In a split second, he took the shot and dropped the man while he was still waving. Then he rolled to his side, hauling his rifle with him, but it was too late. As he tried to reposition his weapon to the target behind him, he heard the click of a gun.
A heavy boot crushed his arm holding the rifle and Miguel gritted his teeth. Someone else kicked him in the head, and the tinny taste of blood flooded his mouth.
A man growled in English, “Drop your weapon and get on your knees. Your team members are all dead.”
Instead of releasing his rifle, Miguel swung it behind him, making contact with someone’s leg. The target grunted and one of his cohorts kicked Miguel in the midsection.
The cold metal of a gun pressed against Miguel’s temple.
“I’m going to tell you one more time. Release your weapon and get on your knees.”
They seemed to have given up on the idea of Miguel releasing anything because someone began to pry his fingers off the rifle, bending them back and breaking a few in the process. They weren’t about to wait for him to get on his knees either, as he was yanked up by his jacket.
Miguel raised his eyes for the first look at his captors. Three men—one pointing a gun at his head, one rubbing his shin and the third assessing him through narrowed eyes.
Miguel cleared his throat and spit some blood out of the side of his mouth. “Was this a trap?”
His question earned him another kick to the gut, and he doubled over.
There was no way anyone could’ve known their position, even if those two boys from earlier in the day had ratted them out, which they probably had. This had been a setup from the start, and in the off chance that he got out of this alive, he’d make it his life’s mission to root out the mole that had been responsible for the deaths of those SEALs down there.
“We ask the questions, pig. How much do you know about the man you call Vlad?”
Since Miguel had no intention of answering any of their questions—now or ever—it looked like he wouldn’t get that chance to track down the mole.
He spit blood again, this time at his interrogator’s foot. “Go to hell.”
As the butt of his own rifle came at his head, Miguel had one thought before the darkness engulfed him.
Jennifer.
Chapter One
Two years later
Jennifer herded her fifth-grade students into the park and yelled at two boys straggling behind. “Chase and Noah, you are not in middle school yet. I can still keep you from walking at promotion this week.”
The two boys laughed and shoved at each other, but they caught up with the class.
Jennifer pressed the smile from her lips. She couldn’t help it if she had a soft spot for rambunctious boys. Her own son kept her on her toes and he was only eighteen months old.
When her class got to the picnic area with the other fifth-grade classes already there, she set them free and she joined the other teachers by the barbecue area, sipping sodas and drinking from water bottles.
Jennifer pointed to the parents grilling the burgers and hot dogs and setting out bags of chips. “Are we helping or what?”
Olivia Gutierrez, who had the classroom next to hers, shook her head and raised her can of soda. “Our wonderful parent volunteers are taking care of everything and told us to relax.”
“We have the best parents.” Jennifer stooped next to a cooler and pulled a bottle of water from the ice. She cracked open the lid and then tipped it toward a man at the edge of the parking lot next to the park. “Is that one of ours?”
Susan Burke, the other fifth-grade teacher at their school, shrugged. “I don’t recognize him, but it’s not like I’ve seen every parent in the fifth grade. Could be a parent from Stowe.”
The man’s attention seemed to float from the kids to the teachers, and a whisper of fear brushed the back of Jennifer’s neck. She called to Mrs. Garrett, one of the teachers from Stowe. “Mrs. Garrett? Is that man in the blue shirt by the parking lot one of yours?”
Mrs. Garrett adjusted her glasses and squinted. “I’ve never seen him before, and I don’t like the way he’s looking at the kids.”
Olivia smirked and elbowed Jennifer in the ribs.
“I’ll find out right now.” Mrs. Garrett, her gray, permed hair waving at the top of her head, marched toward the parking lot like an angry bird.
One of the other Stowe teachers laughed. “Once Pilar gets done with him, he’s gonna wish he never set foot in this park.”
Jennifer smiled, but her muscles tensed as she watched Mrs. Garrett confront the stranger.
Mrs. Garrett gestured toward the kids, waved her arms and pointed toward the barbecue area. When she was done with him, the man hightailed it back to his car.
Jennifer murmured, “Guess he wasn’t a parent.”
“What?” Olivia had turned around from her conversation with a parent.
Everyone else had lost interest in the confrontation. Nobody had watched Mrs. Garrett talk to the man...except Jennifer. She’d been very interested.
“The man at the edge of the parking lot. He left.”
Olivia snorted. “Even if he’d been a parent, Mrs. Garrett had probably scared him off. She scares me.”
Jennifer wiped her clammy palms on the thighs of her slacks and intercepted Mrs. Garrett when she returned to
the barbecue area, her low heels clicking on the cement.
“Who was he?”
“Just an office worker from the area on his lunch break. He didn’t realize the schools were having our end-of-the-school-year picnic today, but I set him straight.”
Jennifer’s gaze shifted to the squat office buildings scattered across the street from the park. If he worked in one of those, why had he driven a car and come through the parking lot? He should’ve crossed at the crosswalk and come in the way the kids had entered.
“Ms. Lynch, Ms. Lynch!” One of the girls from her class was waving her arms. “Do you want to do the Hula-Hoop with us?”
“Duty calls.” She put her bottle of water on a picnic table and promptly forgot about the man in the parking lot as soon as she slipped that pink plastic circle around her waist.
After a few more games, a cheeseburger, a hot dog and enough candy to put her in a sugar coma, Jennifer clasped a clipboard to her chest and raised two fingers. “Anyone in my class leaving with a parent, check in with me before you take off.”
Olivia bumped her shoulder. “With any luck, all of them will leave with a parent and we can stagger back to the school on our own.”
“I doubt that’s going to happen.” Jennifer smiled at one of her free spirits, Chase, approaching with his mother. “Thanks for your help today, Mrs. Cannon.”
“Thank you for a great school year and all your understanding for our son. We’re hoping Chase matures a little in middle school.”
Jennifer’s smile broadened. She hoped Mom wasn’t counting too much on maturity in middle school, or she’d be heartily disappointed. “I’m sure Chase will do just fine in middle school. He won’t have any problems with math. Right, Chase?”
“It’s my favorite subject.”
“I know it is.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Jennifer continued to check out her students. Then she and the other fifth-grade teachers from Richmond gathered their classes, took a head count and started the trek back to the school.
When they reached the corner, Olivia shouted, “As soon as the light changes, cross the street, no dillydallying.”
The kids, giggling at her word choice, surged into the street. Jennifer brought up the rear to make sure all the students made it into the crosswalk. As she glanced back toward the park, her heart stuttered when she spotted the so-called office worker Mrs. Garrett had set straight earlier.
Leaning against a car in the parking lot, he watched the students crossing the street. Or was he?
Jennifer couldn’t tell the precise focus of his gaze from this distance, but he seemed to be looking at the back of the line...at her.
A horn beeped and she jumped. Everyone had made it across the street before the light changed, except her. She jogged to the curb as the kids laughed and called out, “C’mon, Ms. Lynch.”
“Just showing what you’re not supposed to do.”
One of the girls, her face serious, grabbed Jennifer’s hand. “You need to be careful, Ms. Lynch.”
The girl’s words caused a little trickle of fear to drip down her spine as her gaze darted to the park’s now empty lot across the street.
“You’re right, Maddy. I do.”
* * *
LATER THAT EVENING, Jennifer cuddled her son, Mikey, against her chest, her feet kicked up on the coffee table. She pressed her face against his springy, dark hair and inhaled the scent of...toddler, very different from the scent of baby.
His lashes fluttered against his cheek, and she held her breath. She’d just gotten him to sleep after a wild play session that had involved cars, stuffed animals and crackers. She slid her feet from the coffee table and held Mikey close as she threaded her way through the toys on the floor to his bedroom. She liked that Mikey had his own room, even if they shared a bathroom. Two bedroom, one bath places in the nice areas of Austin weren’t all that easy to find, but now she had to move.
She hadn’t felt safe here ever since the break-in.
Kneeling next to Mikey’s new toddler bed, shaped like a car, she pulled back the covers and tucked him in. She kissed his forehead and whispered, “Mommy loves you.”
On the way out of the room, she flicked on his night-light. For being a fearless daredevil, Mikey didn’t like the dark. She needed a night-light as much as he did these days.
After that day when she’d come home from picking up Mikey to find that someone had broken into her house, tossed it and had stolen some small electronics, she had a hard time falling asleep at night. Every little noise had her bolting upright in bed, and then lying awake the rest of the night with eyes wide-open.
She shuffled into the kitchen and uncorked a bottle of red. She splashed some into a glass and swirled it around before taking a sip. She took another sip and closed her eyes, allowing the warmth of the alcohol to seep into her tight muscles.
Having a drink shouldn’t feel so good. She shouldn’t let it feel so good—not with her mother’s alcoholism running through her genes. Mom beat her drinking problem, but Jennifer would never let it get to that point. She sucked in another mouthful of wine and returned to the sofa, dragging a pillow into her lap.
Having Mikey had probably saved her from traveling down the same road as Mom. She couldn’t be impaired and take care of her son. She’d never do that to him.
But, oh, those nights when Mikey stayed with Mom and Dad? The booze was the only thing that allowed Jennifer to forget.
A tear seeped from the corner of her eye. Who was she kidding? She’d never forget. Would never forget the day that crisp naval officer stood on her porch and delivered the news that would shatter her world.
She stabbed the power button on the remote and clicked through the channels, settling on a comedy she’d seen before. She couldn’t laugh, not even with a half a glass of wine swirling in her veins.
As she switched the channel, the dog next door started barking. Max never barked unless something—or someone—wandered into his yard.
Jennifer set down the wineglass. On her way to the sliding door to the patio, she picked up a bat that she’d propped up in the corner of the room after the break-in. Staring outside, she flicked on the light, which illuminated the table, chairs and small barbecue that clustered on one side of the cement slab that passed for a patio. The potted plants and flowers on the other side remained in darkness. She turned the light on and off again and then sucked in her lower lip.
The bulb on the left side of the door must’ve burned out. When had that happened? After the robbery, she’d checked all her locks and lights.
A dark shape moved in the shadows beyond the patio, and her knees almost buckled. Was that an animal? She cupped her hand at the glass and peered into the night.
She needed a dog. She needed a gun. She had a bat.
Hoisting the bat in one hand, she clicked the lock down and slid open the door. She advanced toward the dark side of the patio, raising the bat like Babe Ruth.
“Jennifer?”
She spun around and faced a man standing on her patio, bathed in an otherworldly light.
Her mouth dropped open and she grabbed on to a trellis rising from one of the pots.
“Jen, it’s me. Miguel.”
Miguel? It couldn’t be. How much wine had she drunk in there? She cleared her throat and said the only thing that made sense. “You’re dead.”
Copyright © 2017 by Carol Ericson
ISBN-13: 9781488013089
Pine Lake
Copyright © 2017 by Marilyn Medlock Amann
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